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Why we shouldn’t turn away Syrian refugees

There are probably very few people who have not heard of the tragedy that struck Paris this past Friday. As the horrific events unfolded and the number of lives lost continued to escalate, the genuine threat of terrorism — of ISIS — and the havoc it has been wreaking in the Middle East and Africa hit home. People of all nationalities took to social media to show their support for the French. Facebook let its users overlay the French flag over profile pictures. People began using hashtags like “#prayforparis.” It seemed that overnight, the world had come together in a moment of solemn solidarity.

Still, even as I held France in my thoughts, I could not help but feel wary of what I knew was soon to follow on social media: xenophobia, mistreatment of Muslims and angry, confused people conflating ISIS as the face of Islam.

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I cannot imagine carrying my religion as a weight. I cannot imagine having to constantly declare why my faith is not inherently violent, even though Christianity has had its own share of violence throughout history. And I cannot imagine apologizing to the world for the detestable actions of others, even though I have nothing to do with them — even though casino those people have completely twisted my religion for their own vicious purposes.

Yet, people forget this. Or rather, they choose to be ignorant of the fact that most of ISIS’s victims are Muslim— both in the hijacking of their faith and the lives of many who were taken or displaced. Over half of America’s governors displayed this as they declared they would not accept any Syrian refugees.

States do not have jurisdiction over the process of accepting refugees, but even so, there are ways in which they can make refugee placement a more challenging process. This is despite the fact that refugees must already undergo a thorough screening before they are even let in.

Yet if there is any group that we must have compassion toward in this moment of history, it is the displaced people of Syria. They have had to watch their home be torn apart by vicious civil war, during which a multitude of war crimes have been committed and chemical weapons used. In the midst of all this, ISIS has taken land and lives. As a result, millions have flown for safety. Together, countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have accepted over hundreds of thousands of these displaced Syrians.

Compared to these numbers — and even the numbers of refugees European countries like Germany have accepted — the U.S. promise of 10,000 refugees in the 2016 fiscal year is miniscule.Less than 2,000 have actually been admitted this year, a number dwarfed by refugees of other nationalities. Therefore, if the argument is that we lack resources to accommodate these refugees, I am doubtful.

However, the language used to oppose letting in refugees is more fearful and xenophobic than anything, to which I respond the people who we would admit have been suffering at the hands of the same terrorists who committed those atrocities in Paris. Turning our back on them now would not only display a complete lack of humanity, but it would also show that ISIS’s strategy of cultural divisiveness is a good one.

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The United States can behave in a number of different ways during times of international fear and crisis, but history tells us that we most often become prejudiced and intolerant and sometimes even violently act out against those about whom we have misconceived notions.

Let’s not make this one of those times.

Lea Trusty is a politics major from Saint Rose, La. She can reached at ltrusty@princeton.edu.

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